


Two of Us; One Bed

by MyEvilTwin (ProtoNeoRomantic)



Series: Blood Screaming [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alcohol, Arrest, Awkward Sexual Situations, Circumstances cause us to be unavoidably naked, Dark Past, Drunk Buffy, F/M, Falling In Love, First Aid, Fugitives, Goodbyes, Joyce is confused again, Knifeplay, Masturbation in Shower, Motel, Naked Buffy, Naked Giles, On the Run, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Guilt, Sexual Humor, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vampires, What Have I Done, Xander is out of the loop, sexual innuendo, where do we go from here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:37:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1266877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/MyEvilTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the run from the police Buffy and Giles are forced to share a cheap motel room.  Dammit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Inn Trouble

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lady's Choice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223416) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 



> Contemporaneous with Lady's Choice, Chapter 3: "In Trouble" Still prior to the last scene of "Passion" in linear time.
> 
> For more information on Canon Compliance/Divergence and Story Mechanics and Themes, see series description.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles and Buffy fight a two front war against lust and guilt while they try to determine if it is safe for Buffy to return to Sunnydale.

Rupert was startled from his fevered dreams by the ear splitting sound of alarm bells. He rolled over and hit the floor, by way of the coffee table. Bloody hell it hurt. But that wasn’t the main reason his head was pounding. For a moment he struggled to understand _why_ he was lying exhausted and hung over on his living room floor, or couch for that matter. It reminded him unpleasantly of the endless last weeks of his much too long engagement to Gwendolyn. But there was no woman in his life now with the power to eject him from his bed.

Like a nightmare, the events of the past couple of days came rushing back. Jenny’s battered body, Angel’s cruel mockery, Buffy’s tight, wet twat, the tears and other unpleasantness that followed from all of it. Unfortunately, he had neither drunk enough nor been hit on the head hard enough to leave any significant gaps in his memory though time was a bit of a blur. He had no idea when he had gone to sleep or for how long, but as it was dark now, he presumed it was Saturday night. He was still wearing about half of the suit of clothes he’d donned for work Friday morning, back when he’d been a respectable school librarian. Or at least not a fucker of underage students and Slayers. Gwendolyn would be proud, he supposed, to be so well and truly vindicated. So would a lot of other people, no friend of his among them.

When the phone refused to stop ringing, Rupert had a strong impulse to yank it from its cord and hurl it across the room. He picked it up instead, on the theory that persistence might be an indication of importance. “Hello?” he murmured, not knowing whom or what to expect.

“Giles!” Buffy cried, “You have to come get me! I’m in big trouble.”

“Where are you?” he asked, suddenly alert.

“The payphone by the gas station behind the mall,” Buffy responded hurriedly. “I need you to come right now. I’m wounded and the police are looking for me.”

“I’m coming right now,” Giles assured her resolutely. Replacing the receiver, he paused only long enough to grab his car keys and was out the door.

The car clock said it was just after seven when he pulled in behind the station. It felt like midnight at least.“Thank God!” Buffy gasped, as she limped to the vehicle and collapsed inside. She was wearing the same half an outfit from that morning, now with the skirt hiked up indecently over a sweater tied to her thigh revealing the fact that she’s somehow lost her underpants. He thought guiltily of the damage he’d done to them earlier, hoping it wasn’t a major factor in their loss, then hoping it was when he considered even a few of the competing possibilities. She was filthy, stinking of shit and blood.

Giles quickly backed his Citron out of the well-lit parking lot and emerged into the street.“What happened?” he asked, worriedly.

“Angel,” said Buffy bitterly. “He got Willow’s father. Snatched him right through the ceiling of the men’s room at the mall.”

“Good lord!”Giles breathed.

“Took him down through this tight little duct thingy into the basement. I caught up with them in the tunnels, but there were more of them than I could handle in a tight space like that. There were eight of them down there if you count Spike, although he was _mostly_ just lying there watching. I only managed to put a stake in one of them, the one that bit my leg. I broke Angel’s jaw though, I’m pretty sure. And his good right arm. Right after he popped me in the mouth. I tried to stake him but the closest I got was a gut wound, and I didn’t even get it in very deep. Then the cavalry showed up. That’s when the biting and the sword fighting and all of that went down.”

“Well, A for effort,” said Giles with grim amusement, glad Angel was suffering at least, “But, what do the police want with you? And what's happened to Willow?”

“The cops got her,” Buffy said matter-of-factly, skipping ahead to the second question.

“Bloody hell!” Giles cursed. “For what, exactly.”

“Apparently” Buffy explained, “they think we’re tangled up in some kind of illegal pharmaceutical ring that snatched Dr. Rosenberg to steal his prescription pad.”

“God in heaven!” Giles exclaimed, instantly realizing exactly how that nonsensical conclusion made perfect sense of two set of clues that the Sunnydale PD were trying to force to fit together like pieces of a single puzzle.

“We were forging a scrip for not-so-knocked-up pills in the ladies room when we heard the screaming,” Buffy explained, confirming his suspicions. “I heard the mall cops talking in the parking lot when I came back up through the manhole on Birchwood. They found the pad in the bathroom along with our purses, and I. D.s, and stakes, and crosses, and vials of holy water, and my hunting knife, and my just-in-case silver stiletto, because you never know what you might have to poke with something silver.”

“This whole sordid mess is all my fault,” Giles fretted.

“All _our_ fault,” Buffy corrected him. “So how do we un-sord-it?”

Giles sighed and took one hand off the wheel to rub his temples, which he found to be somewhat less relaxing when done with one’s eyes open. “I need to think,” he said.

“We could go to your place,” Buffy suggested.

“Oh, no,” Giles countered earnestly, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“I’ll try to behave myself,” she said sardonically, implying a lot more certainty in the absurdity of such a concern than she actually felt.

Giles made a nervous sound between a cough and a laugh. He didn’t mean to visually inspect Buffy’s body again, but he did. He could see her pubic hair, which was actually a surprisingly effective antidote to arousal. It was matted with dried blood among other very foul things. He supposed it was too much to hope that she was getting her period. Somehow, he felt, even under these extreme conditions, she’d have mentioned good news like that. “If the police are looking for you,” he clarified, “You probably shouldn’t be hanging around an active crime scene.” He didn’t add that the last time they’d been alone in his apartment they had actually come perilously close to having sex again, so close, in fact, that he was pretty sure he had committed another major felony.

Buffy had to admit he had a point about the crime scene thing. “Well we can’t go to my house or Willow’s or Xander’s,” She pointed out. “Where does that leave? School?” Giles was honestly choking now, so much so that Buffy had to slap him on the back. For an instant she had a horrifying future flash of the two of them trapped in a long dead marriage that would eventually involve her feeding him strained peas and wiping his ass while their deadbeat college dropout son stayed holed up in the garage all day summoning demons and listening to death metal.

“Lord no,” he gasped as soon as he could draw breath.

“That’s one of the first places they’d look,” Buffy agreed.

“And if they found us there together...” He literally shuddered.

Buffy sighed. “Vegas it is then,” she said with a wan smile.

“Of course,” Giles quipped. “We can open that office supply warehouse you’ve always dreamed about.” Buffy laughed to cover the sudden pang of heartache she felt remembering the morning she had told Giles about that silly dream and another, much darker one. It was hard to believe that less than six weeks ago Angel’s death had been her greatest fear. If only that nightmare had come true in its entirety. At least then Angel would have died with his soul intact.

And Buffy would still be a virgin.

Buffy willed herself to swallow her anguish and confusion. She could not start crying. Not here. Not now. Not in front of Giles. Whether she wept for the loss of her first love or the loss of her innocence, she’d be mourning something that, by wishing for it back, she was rejecting him, rejecting everything they had done and how it had made them feel, in a much deeper sense than ‘let’s just don’t do it again.’ With everything he was already struggling manfully to handle, he didn’t need that from her right now.

They had driven as far as they could go in Sunnydale. They either had to get off the main drag or split town. Giles made a decision. “There’re a dozen motels just the other side of Fondren,” he said aloud. “All we really need is light and water. I have my first aid kit in the back.”Buffy nodded her agreement, though a tiny sneaking part of her wondered if maybe he just _wanted_ to take her to a motel. If so, she wasn’t really sure if she was for or against. She felt so tired of struggling under the weight of everything that was happening in her life, so tired of facing it all alone. He made her feel safe, despite the fact that the circumstance of their being together would actually be very dangerous.

Regardless, Buffy couldn’t see that there was a better alternative as far as where to go. Within forty minutes, they came upon the Pacific Coast Motor Lodge. Giles disappeared inside and arranged to be lodged there. He received service very quickly. When he was finished, he slipped back into the driver’s seat and silently handed Buffy the keys without looking at her. She blushed unnoticed in the merciful darkness. It was such a pantomime of a seedy motel tryst that, if not for the events of the last day and a half, she would have been amused by it. Or maybe a little grossed out to be honest. But for better or for worse, that was one thing had changed forever in Buffy’s mind. Though she might feel guilty and unsettled about fucking Giles she could never again be physically repulsed by the idea. She now knew what lay under all those layers of tweed: the toned, attractive body of a vital, passionate man. That and a penis some gods might envy.

“Here we are, 247,” Giles said, guiding his vehicle carefully into the matching slot. Buffy groaned, looking at the key to confirm that they were in fact on the second floor. “They don’t have anything downstairs,” he explained apologetically. “They’re remodeling. Wait there,” he added, “I’ll help you get up.”Buffy managed to get herself out while Giles was groping for his first aid kit, a solid looking metal box, in the back end of the car. Her leg felt weaker than it had less than an hour earlier in Sunnydale, hotter, more swollen. There were four long, deep welts down the inside of her thigh where monstrous claws had furrowed her flank from cunt to calf. The thumb welt paralleled the mouth made gashes that ran nearly from her ass to her knee on the outside.

She leaned against the car and waited for Giles. Holding the kit in his left hand, he wrapped the same arm around Buffy, his box fitted directly over hers, like one of those black sensor’s bars. The way her ersatz bandage bunched up her already short skirt, she probably needed it. Practically her whole ass was sticking out in the back. Buffy leaned into Giles’ embrace,letting him bear her weight. She tried to position herself so as not to gratuitously rub her bare buttocks against his crotch, which was harder than she ever would have thought. Logistically that is. The _positioning_ was hard. As in difficult! You have such a dirty mind.

They Climbed. Buffy couldn’t tell how much of her raised heart rate and breathless flush was due to the effort of climbing with her swollen leg versus being pressed against Giles’ body knowing how badly he wanted to fuck her and how well he could do it. What she could tell, in the light from the bare bulb above the motel room door, was that he was as flushed and breathless as she was. She could feel his heart hammering.

At the top of the stairs, Giles paused to unlock the door. Buffy leaned on the balcony rail, watching as he jiggled and slid and repositioned the key, coaxing it into the almost too tight keyhole. At least twice he had to take it all the way out and start over, grunting in frustration. ‘Just one little trouble,’ she thought sardonically. He was peeled down to half tweed, wearing only his pants and a T-shirt. Even without being engorged with the blood of unrestrained passion, his huge package bulged the front of his pants. He looked like he was wearing a codpiece. No wonder he wore a jacket everywhere he went.

Finally, the key slid in just right. The lock turned stiffly. Metal groaned. Tiny tumblers tumbled into the spaces they’d been made to fill. There was a sharp, audible click of release and the room opened up to them. Giles supported Buffy across the threshold, lifting her a little ways off her feet.

The room wasn’t quite what Buffy had expected. “Sorry,” Giles apologized again. “they were all out of the two doubles. All I could get was the one Queen.” And Buffy found herself swallowing angry tears of self-reproach once again for what she had though and the memories it had triggered. ‘Two of us, one bed.’ What a sick, sorry feeling of regret followed the thought that Buffy doubted she could trust Giles to be as much of a gentleman as Angel!

The light was better on the inside. Giles eased Buffy down onto the edge of the bed and knelt before her to remove the fouled sweater from her thigh, exposing an angry mass of scabbing, swelling and bruising, which on anyone else would have indicated wounds two days old. If her wounds had been two days old, they would already have been badly infected. Nearly every exposed inch of her leg was smeared with dried sewer sludge.Under her scabs the wounds were bound to be festering, teaming with new life, tiny cells growing and dividing without regard their host’s wants, needs or desires. They needed to be cleaned, scraped off, cleaned again, treated with an anti-bacterial agent and bandaged up.

“Right then,” he said to himself as much as to Buffy, “I think we’d better start in the shower.”Buffy gave him a pointed, questioning look, or at least he imagined that she did. Flustered and annoyed with himself for being so, he added, “by which I mean you, of course... erm...solo as it were,”

“Thank you for clearing that up,” said Buffy sarcastically.

“Yes, right, well, do you think you can stay on your feet in the shower?” He asked, hating the part of himself that begged to be told he could help.

“I’ll manage,” Buffy replied with a rueful smile. She hobbled to the bathroom and closed the door.

Giles sat down on the end of the bed and gave his temples a good, closed-eyed rubbing at last. It helped, but he still felt like rubbing something else. Like his cock. Against her ass. In the Shower. ‘For the love of God!’ he silently chastised himself. ‘Get a hold of yourself, man! What are you, fifteen? For God’s sake, get your head out of her cunt and concentrate! Buffy is genuinely in trouble!’

He wasn’t all that worried about the gashes in Buffy’s leg. He had what he needed to take care of her, and she would heal fast. Sadly,he judged there was little doubt what had become of Ira Rosenberg. What most urgently needed attending to was Buffy’s and Willow’s trouble with the police. If they were suspected in Dr. Rosenberg’s disappearance or death, it would not be a good idea for Buffy to show her face in Sunnydale, but if she were only being sought as a witness, hiding would create unwarranted suspicion. The business with the prescription pad was still a problem for both girls, either way.

‘Well,’ he thought, ‘you’ve really done it now, Rupert, you stupid bastard.’These were two blossoming young women with first rate minds and, given their youth, surprisingly strong character. They deserved a first rate future. He was ashamed to realize they might stand to lose significant educational or profession opportunities on account of his failure restrain his pythonoid penis. But even that was understating the problem quite a bit.

Giles was horrified all over again by the realization that his Slayer might be becoming pregnant at that very moment and at this point there seemed to be little he could do to stop it. But he didn’t have time to wallow in his regret. He needed to find out what the police were up to. Without revealing that he was hole up in a cheap motel with their seventeen-year-old suspect. He also needed to know what Willow had told them. She and Buffy were both entirely too innocent to be decent liars. He wondered if Willow were still being held by the police. He lay down on the bed and groaned. He knew exactly whom he must call to find out.

Mercifully, his conversation with Xander was a quick one. He felt uneasy the entire time, certain that if the boy had any clue what he’d actually done to Buffy, he’d report it immediately out of spite. He so clearly wanted so very much to fuck her himself. The greatest obstacle to getting to the point, in fact, was that Xander simply couldn’t calm down about the distressful situation facing the two objects of his obsessive attachment. Despite the boy’s hysterics, Giles was soon able to glean that Dr. Rosenberg had been found dead in a ditch. Willow was still being held. He knew nothing else. Except that Joyce Summers was on the verge of initiating a nationwide manhunt for whomever had taken her daughter.

“Listen carefully,” Giles instructed,suppressing a shudder at the horrifying image of what his life might be like in an American prison. “I want you to call Joyce and tell her you’ve heard from Buffy and she’s safe. Don’t mention my name or where we are.”

“I don’t know where you are,” Xander reminded him.

“Good,” Giles replied. “Then you won’t be tempted. Tell her Buffy’s scared to come home until she knows how much trouble she’s likely to be in and that she said she’d try to make contact again soon. Try to persuade Joyce to find out and tell you exactly what charges are being considered and what Willow has revealed to the police.”

“Roger that,” said Xander earnestly, and hung up to go complete his mission.

“Giles!” Buffy shouted a merciful second after he had hung up, “I’m all clean! Where do you want me, in here or on the bed?!”

‘Anytime anywhere!’ Giles thought. “I’m—coming!” he shouted, frustrated with himself, regretting the appearance that his frustration was directed at her. “I’ll be in there in a second!” ‘She won’t let me touch her if she thinks I’m mad at her,’ he thought, and hard upon the backside of that thought came another, ‘Oh dear Lord! I am in so much trouble!’

 


	2. M’aider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles gives Buffy some much needed medical attention. "This isn't sex it's first aid."

“Jeez,” Buffy mumbled sullenly when Giles entered the bathroom, “Somebody woke up on the wrong side of never going to bed at all this morning.”

Sitting on the edge of the motel tub, her injured leg stretched out on the toilet in front of her, Buffy was the portrait of youth and vulnerability. Her slender, diminutive, towel-wrapped form, her clean-scrubbed face, her baby-girl pout pierced Giles through the heart with a mixture of tenderness and regret. Here she was injured, dependent, needing his help, his protection. He ought to be ashamed of himself for even thinking of taking advantage of her. He was ashamed of himself . But he still wanted to get his hands under her towel. “You can’t touch me like that,” she chided him mildly. For an instant he was startled, thinking she’d read his mind, or more probably his eyes. “You have to scrub up,” she reminded him. “Otherwise you’ll only make it worse.”

Buffy watched as Giles lathered his hands and arms up to the elbows and scrubbed them in the bathroom sink. He hardly seemed like the same person she’d been seeing and talking to and chafing under in a brat-kid-resisting-pseudo-parental-authority kind of way the last thirteen months. For starters, she could see his tattoo. Besides being a potent reminder that he hadn’t always been so tweedy, that maybe his usual stuffiness was an act of will rather than a true expression of his inner being, the mark of Eyghon drew her eye to the substantial and well defined musculature of his arms and thence his chest.

Of course, she’d always known his upper body had to be more muscular than what you could see in a suit. She’d sparred with him often enough to know he kept in shape. But she’d never really gotten a chance to look at those parts of him before. His muscles didn’t bulge like Mr. America’s or anything like that, but in nothing but a T-shirt, she could see that they were indeed beautifully toned. Memories more tactile than visual told her the same was true of the rest of his body, his calves, his thighs, his abs, his ass.

He really was very, very sexy. Even apart from the fact of his having of that ginormous schlong. He had a nice face, for that matter, despite his age. He looked sophisticated, distinguished. Well, usually he did anyway. Right now he looked intense, dangerous, like some kind of a hardened old biker or something. But even at that, if Buffy let herself contemplate for even a moment that they could be a really and truly actual couple couple, she had to admit, she could do worse.

Get a grip! She reminded herself. This is Giles. **Gi** ∙ _les_ , n. 1. The person who makes rules, sets schedules and guilts you like a mom into doing your sacred duty, _see also_ Watcher. 2. A much, much older, smarter, wiser and more serious grownup actual man who does not have any place in his life for a bubble headed teenage girlfriend who, if he and the universe would let her, would spend eighty hours a week listening to pop-music and watching television. The only couple related activity he could ever possibly want to share with her was sex. That would never been enough for him. Or for her. Even if it was spectacularly amazing sex. He wasn’t that kind of a guy. She wasn’t that kind of a girl. Sooner or later, they both had to remember that. It seemed like it had probably better be sooner.

When his hands were clean, Giles took a pint bottle of amber liquid from his first-aid kit and pulled out his pocket knife. “Ummm... What are you going to do with that?” Buffy asked, eyeing the knife worriedly.

“I’m going to debride your wounds to... erm, scrape the scabs off so that they can be properly cleaned and disinfected,” he explained, his tone mildly apologetic.

Buffy made a pained, disgusted face. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Here,” he said gently, holding out what she now realized was a bottle of whiskey. “Try to swallow about a quarter of that. We’ll need the rest for the actual disinfecting.”

Buffy took hold of the bottle by the neck, examining it skeptically, still holding her towel with the other hand to keep it from gapping, not that it was concealing any great mysteries, she realized. There really was no part of her body he hadn’t already examined in detail with at least one or two of his five senses. For a moment she was overwhelmed by a flood of remembered sensation. His hands, his legs, his mouth, his cock moving in, on, over and against every part of her body. And then, her towel _was_ concealing one fact that he _might_ not know after all. Her genitals were wet and pink and puffy in their subtle female way with the swelling of desire.

“I’m not sure bringing alcohol into the mix is such a great idea,” she said.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Giles snapped, suddenly indignant, suddenly very impatient, very annoyed with her, partly mistaking her meaning because of the defensive way she was holding her towel closed and partly over correcting for his own darker impulses. “I’m not trying to... incapacitate you! I just thought you might like to be a bit numb before I flay half your leg with my pocket knife!”

“I didn’t—! I’m not accusing you of—! ...Of trying to _do_ something to me!” Buffy countered, frustrated and defensive and apologetic all at the same time. “I just meant...” she looked away, blushing. “You know what?” she said, “It doesn’t matter what I meant.” She took her hand from the towel to open the bottle, ignoring the fact that it actually did gap open to reveal the bottom curve of one breast, a generous swath of her concave belly, a whole leg, half an ass cheek and just a hint of pubic hair. Giles averted his eyes, running an agitated hand through his hair.

Buffy turned the bottle up and took a swig. She coughed, made a face, and took another. “God!” she gasped, “you actually _drink_ this stuff? It tastes like gasoline smells.” She took another drink. “Nayeah! I feel like I just backed up to a pump and jammed a hose down my throat.”

“Well, that’s 120 proof Wild Turkey,”he half apologized, “A fine American compromise between aqua vita and rubbing alcohol. The good stuff goes down a bit smoother, but it’s an acquired taste regardless. I dimly recall finding it a little hard to swallow as a boy. In fact I think I spit it out the first time. But, then I managed to get on the outside of quite a lot of it at public school. You can stop now,” he added, just a little apprehensively. While he'd been talking she'd gotten nearly half the bottle inside of her.

“Well, but this isn’t the first time, it’s the second,” Buffy reminded him, “There’s just a lot more of it.”If this was supposed to be a joke, she delivered it in the world’s best deadpan. Of course, that was frequently her style. For his own peace of mind, Giles chose to believe that he was reading too much into it, seeing a comparison that wasn’t there. Even if the comparison was favorable, he didn’t find the fact that she was in a position to make it all that humorous. Besides, he’d been subjected to favorable comparisons for more than thirty years now. His fantastic elastic penis had been acclaimed, defamed, toasted, roasted, blessed, caressed, cursed, repressed, coveted, reviled, inspected, accepted and rejected throughout the United Kingdom and in half a dozen far exotic lands, now including the Grate Affronted and Indignant State of California. He was over it.

“Actually,”Buffy added half a second later, a grin of cheerful surprise, spreading across her face, “this is starting to feel pretty good!”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Giles murmured. Considering her Slayer metabolism in conjunction with her amateur status as a drinker, she was just about thirty seconds away from being very, very drunk for a relatively short period of time. Another girl of her mass and experience might have been in danger of death.

She handed him the bottle and laughed out loud, then giggled at her own laughter. “I’m all hot!” she said, by way of explanation. “I’m, like, tingling all over, and here I am all naked, and everything!” She was nearly doubled over now. “And you!”Her towel was in danger of coming untucked of falling open all together. “I mean, the look on your _face_! It’s so... _Giles_!” He guessed thirty seconds was an over estimation.

Giles flipped open his knife. “If that stuff’s going to do you any good,” he said grimly, “I think we had best get at it.”

If this were television this would be a great place for an act break. A dramatic line heavy with dark implication. A swooning sense of relief at the permission, the compulsion to avert one’s eyes. This is not Television.

Buffy bit her lip and swallowed hard, still woozy but no longer amused, as Giles closed in on her, knife in hand. She felt a fool for being scared. She’d been in pain before, lots of times. She’d been hurt badly enough to be in danger of death. But all of those times she’d gave as good as she’d gotten. The heat of battle had blocked all but the haziest sense of personal danger. Even knowing he meant her nothing but good, even knowing it was what she desperately needed, it violated her every instinct to sit there, passive and exposed, to offer no resistance as he came ever closer his weapon at the ready to rend her, to score her flesh, to shed her blood.

“I Think this will work better if you sit on the edge of the tub and extend your leg into it,” Giles suggested. “that way we can wash any... debris down the drain and irrigate the wounds at the same time. Then we’ll pour on the alcohol, rub in a little Neo Sporran and get some gauze taped over it.”

“Just do it!” Buffy half pleaded half demanded, both angry and near tears in her emotionally unregulated drunken state. “I already have to live through it once, I don’t need the instant replay.”

Giles apologized in a tone he hoped was comforting. When she was in position, he knelt on the floor by her right flank , pulled back the edge of her towel, pressed the blade of the knife against her and dragged it across her scab. Buffy’s high, breathless gasp was almost indistinguishable from the sound she’d made when he’d first driven his adamant cock into the depths of her eager pussy, this time followed much more immediately by tears. Buffy whimpered in a way that you won’t hear in your average porno movie. Her pain was unambiguous, forthright, not tempered with or on the edge of anything. “I’m sorry to be such a wimp,” she fretted, embarrassed but nonetheless in agony.

“Yes,” said Giles dryly, laughing just a little, “I’m terribly disappointed in you. You ought to be able to endure a little pocket knife surgery with a smile and a joke on your lips.”

“I know that!” Buffy wailed, then, partly contradicting herself, “I know I’m acting stupid about acting stupid. Damn it, you don’t have to make fun of me!”

Giles apologized again, which only seemed to make her angrier. Seeing no better way forward, he shut his mouth and got on about his business. Blood and puss ran down the side of Buffy’s leg and dripped from the edge of his knife. He turned on the faucet, adjusting it to warm and invited her to wash the blood away.

“Now the firewater?” Buffy asked, with a mixture of feeble hope and queasy apprehension.

Her anger was gone as quickly as it had come. Her heart was a pinball that he batted every which way without meaning to, almost without noticing. He was blind to the way his broad, intended words and acts were muted and transmuted, his subtlest gestures and vocalizations popping into garish relief under the strobe of her distorted senses. He did not hear what she heard.

“No, I’m not done with you yet,” Giles informed her remorsefully. “That was only half the job. I still have to get to the other side.”

“Oh,Wuhan!” Buffy pouted, both genuinely put out and playfully ridiculing herself for being so, which told Giles she was actually coping with the pain quite well. He rubbed a little alcohol on his blade as he considered how best to finish the task. There was nothing for it, he decided but to dive right in. She was a lifelong cheerleader, so at least she ought to be limber enough to do what he was about to ask.

“I need you to open your legs,” he said “and stretch your right one as straight out on the edge of the tub as you can.

Buffy, blushed and grinned. “You’re _not_ done with me yet, are you?” she said. She was coping with her pain quite well _and_ still very, very drunk.

“It’s going to hurt like hell,” he reminded her, somewhere between apologetic and scolding.

“Hurt me,” Buffy agreed, a quiet yet unseemly enthusiasm shining through her tone of grim resolution. “I can take it!” she declared with the pride of a martyr, “I can take anything!” Then she laughed drunkenly, struck by the alternate implications of her words. “I can take it all,” she giggled. So drunk was she in fact, that she couldn’t balance in the required position after all. She fell backward against Giles who scrambled to rise to a seat on the toilet and catch her in his arms, remembering to drop his knife just in the nick of time. Her towel fell open, completely exposing her breasts, belly and snatch. She laughed more loudly than ever, collapsing completely against him, not even trying to right herself. “I think fate is trying to get us to fuck again!” she declared.

“Or perhaps gravity is trying to suck us towards the surface of the earth,” he countered acerbically. Buffy shifted in his embrace, gratuitously, he felt. “Stop that, or I’m going to drop you on the floor,” he said, half meaning it, exasperated with her and the situation and most of all himself. And the fact that he felt significant stirrings in his loins tending toward an extraordinarily unwanted erection.

“My leg is killing me!” Buffy laughed, still making no effort whatsoever to sit up. She’d obviously ingested both too little and too much ethanol, a hazard of using a drug whose side effects were as strong or stronger than it’s medicinal qualities. What he really needed for this kind of extreme “first aid” was some kind of narcotics. But in this country particularly, they were somewhat dangerous to carry around in one’s car. He pushed her into a sitting position on the tub rail and, holding her towel around her midsection, using it more as a handle than a drape, he supported her upright in the crook of his left arm.

“Stretch your leg out again,” he instructed Buffy firmly, like a school teacher, like a parent, like a Watcher. She did it, no longer laughing, seeming suddenly contrite. He reached down with his right hand and retrieved his knife from the bathroom floor, rubbing liquor over it once again. This time he held the point rather than the edge of the blade to Buffy’s flesh just where her soft inner thigh gave way to her softer outer pubic region, in the valley of the shadow of the Mountain of Venus. Still more than half embracing her, he ran his knife the length of each welt, retracing each of the lines that the demon had marked upon her, like a scribe trying to correct what should never have been written, ripping them open so that they could be cleansed.

His knife strokes were as quick as could be steadily and carefully done over that long and curving expanse of flesh with his body bent around hers at such an inopportune angle. They were agonizingly, tortuously slow. Buffy gasped and moaned and struggled not to writhe, a torment in itself, for both of them. At last, Giles laid his knife aside and helped Buffy turn so that the warm water could wash over her bleeding leg once more.

He could only have done these things to the Slayer, Giles realized. Any other girl would have been too badly hurt by the help he was giving her. Still, they were in the home stretch now. It would all be over soon. And when his ministrations had been brought to their conclusion, she would be the better for it. Buffy wasn’t any other girl.

“Are you ready?” he asked, twisting to retrieve the half drunk pint of whiskey from the lip of the sink. They both ignored the way his tweed bound cock and thigh inevitably brushed against her towel clad buttocks in the course of this tight maneuver.

Buffy nodded, biting her lip. “I’m ready,” she said, sounding more doubtful, more hesitant, more unready than he had ever heard her sound in his life, so much so that misplaced mercy all but overwhelmed his resolve. But he knew what she really needed.

“Ah!Ah!Ah!” she cried out as he poured the searing liquid into her open wounds. When the brilliant intensity of stinging reached its climax and fell away into a bliss of mere pain and discomfort, she sagged against him, breathing hard. Both of them were shaken, still shaking.

There was a banging on the paper thin wall and a man’s voice shouted. “Hey! Fuck-bunnies! Keep it down in there. Some of us are trying to sleep!”

“It’s a quarter of nine you drunk!” Giles shouted back, a strange combination of unglued and indignant. “Get a home! Some of us are trying to fuck!”

“Wow,” said Buffy, ironic humor covering her genuine sense of dislocation, “Giles never told me he had an evil twin.” She laughed much too hard. Very, very drunk.

“Well honestly,” Giles muttered still ruffled, “If a person can’t have sex in a cheap motel, what the devil are they for?”

“But this isn’t sex,” Buffy reminded him, still laughing. “It’s first aid!”

 


	3. Mayday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After taking matters into his own hand gives him some relief, Giles is able to think of one person he may be able to call upon for help. Meanwhile, Joyce decides the time has come to call the police.

Joyce entered by the back door,exhausted. The red light on her answering machine flashed a gaping Zero. She had been everywhere, talked to everyone, poked her head in every hidey-hole. Buffy was gone. Joyce’s stomach was clinched like a fist. She couldn’t take another breath without knowing what had become of her precious girl. Mercifully, the phone rang. She dove for it gratefully, crying out, “Hello?” At that moment, she heard a feeble knocking at her back door.

“Buffy called me, she’s okay... you know, not okay okay, but alive; anyway, she told me to call you!” Xander exhaled in one breath.

“Xander!” Joyce demanded the pone cradled against her ear as she opened the door, “Where is she?” She peered out into the night, thinking she must have imagined the knock. Then a low moaning caused her to look down...

“She wouldn’t tell me,” Xander was saying, “Just ‘a safe place.’”A man lay on Joyce’s doorstep; beaten,swollen, black and blue. It was only by his dark hair and pleading eyes that she recognized him as her daughter’s one time lover and recent stalker.

“Angel!” she gasped, on the verge of dropping to her knees. He looked badly beaten.

“Don’t let him come inside!” Xander shouted, shrill with panic.

“He’s hurt,” said Joyce, stunned and confused.

“He killed them!” Xander wailed. “Angel killed Dr. Rosenberg and Miss Calendar! Buffy told me! Please, please get inside! He’ll kill you!”

At that moment Joyce locked eyes with Angel. What should have been the windows to his soul opened upon... something else. With a small scream, she jumped back across her threshold, just as he grabbed for her. His unnaturally sharp nails ripped the skin of her leg. Joyce slammed the door, nearly dropping the phone. Angel howled with rage like a wounded animal. He pounded the door with both fists. It broke from its hinges and was thrust part way into the kitchen. If it had gone in another inch Joyce would have gotten thumped.

She screamed and ran behind the counter as Angel grabbed the edge of the huge slab of wood and shoved it into the opening as far as it would go without his taking another step forward or even sticking his hands inside. Joyce frantically searched for a good strong knife. Glad as she was that Angel wasn’t coming inside, she didn’t understand why any more than she understood how he could wield as large a thing as he was repeatedly thrusting it into her wide open back door. “Xander,” she gasped breathlessly, “ _what_ is happening?”

“He killed them,” Xander repeated. “He killed them both. Buffy got away, but now she’s afraid to come home. She thinks they think she killed Dr. Rosenberg! Is he still there?”

“Yes!” Joyce wailed, panicked. “He broke the door down, but he’s not coming inside, I don’t understand...”

“Shush!” Xander scolded, “Don’t say anything else about it. He won’t come in unless you invite him.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” she declared, then, with sudden realization, “I have to call the police!” Angel threw the door into the kitchen. Joyce screamed and ducked under the counter as wooden shrapnel exploded everywhere. Howling with animal rage and frustration, he turned and loped away into the night. “Oh dear lord,” Joyce gasped, it was too much to absorb. “We have to call the police,” she repeated.

“I don’t know...” Xander said, worriedly. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

“I’m calling the police right now,” said Joyce firmly. If they do... try to nail Buffy for something we’ll... just have to take it as it comes. This monster, this ‘Angel’, he has to be stopped.”

****

When Buffy’s wounds were salved and bandaged, Giles gave her a couple of Motrin and put her to bed, wearing her towel for a night dress. She went quietly, compliantly, like an obedient child. She _thanked_ him for taking care of her. He wanted to weep. The old saying that in wine there is truth is one of the truest and the most false. Drunk Buffy was less than herself, but also more essentially herself, more than naked. Notwithstanding the occasional outburst of giddiness or lust, she was a good little girl. It made him feel like a vile seducer and at the same time like a harsh, ungrateful, over demanding parent, having been unappreciative of this extraordinary young person who could and would fight like a demon and take it like a man even though she was really a seventeen-year-old girl. Giles sat down on the bed next to her, on top of the covers she was under. “It’s my job to look out for you,” he reminded her gently, “and my privilege. You don’t have to thank me.”

Buffy propped up against her pillows and turned towards him. Their faces were inches apart. Despite the sheets and blankets between them, they both still knew she was only wearing a towel. They both still knew that whatever else they were, they were a man and a woman alone in a motel room, sitting together on its only bed. Buffy looked forthrightly into Giles’ eyes. In that moment, her eyes did not seem clouded by alcohol. They were clear and deep, deep pools of desire, hued in the cool, inviting gentle green of precious, delicate new life. He was in danger of falling in, of drowning. “Most people just say ‘you’re welcome’,” she said, mock gravity bursting the moment. Then she laughed a small, sweet, merry, innocent laugh.

Giles felt suddenly relieved, suddenly on safe and familiar ground again. Without even thinking, he leaned in a little closer. The ground shifted under him. He was poised on the edge of the well. Buffy put her hand on his shoulder and would have pulled him closer still, would have brought him tumbling into her. Her face was tilted upwards, her lips slightly apart. Rupert’s mind cried out in distress clutching at the wisdom and strength that fled from him as blood rushed away from his brain. He could smell the clean sent of her skin. He could feel the depth of her longing for his affection. His heart pounded. His breath quickened and deepened. He stood abruptly, as one leaping from a closing trap.“I... need to take a shower,” he declared, by way of apology.

Drunk Buffy giggled. “Hot or cold?" she asked

“Long,” he said. “I’m coated in two days’ filth.”

She laughed merrily again, then yawned wide and luxurious, like a cat. “Such a dirty old man,” she muttered as if to herself, then curled on her side and was suddenly asleep.

Sighing with both regret and relief, Giles headed for the bathroom. He piled his clothes in a heap on top of Buffy’s. Except for the sweater, which was too far gone to do anything but further contaminate the rest, all their clothes would have to be washed out in the sink. They were much too dirty for clean bodies to be put back into. Of course, that would mean remaining naked while they dried overnight. Naked in this tiny room with drunk naked Buffy and only one bed. For the deadly sin of lust, there could hardly be a nearer occasion. “Lord give me strength,” he said only partly ironically and got into the shower.

Giles began to rub soap all over his body under the warm, gentle spray. He soaped and rubbed his arms and chest, his abs and back, his legs and buttocks, his thighs and crotch. His cock and balls and asshole. He washed away the sweat and smoke and gasoline, the blood and booze and ash and grime. He scrubbed and scoured himself until his skin was a glowing pink, then scrubbed some more. He scrubbed just a little harder over the skin of one arm, over the mark of Eyghon. But that was a stain that could never be removed. It wasn’t a tattoo, no mere work of ink and needle. It was a part of the pattern of him now, in the warp and weave of him. Even if the skin were scraped or burned away, it would grow back, a Lamarckian addition to his essence. He had invited the demon in.

Despite having very thoroughly exfoliated himself, Giles felt anything but clean. His balls were heavy with semen. His cock was still half sitting up, begging him to rub it some more. It was used to getting some attention at intervals of no more than twenty-four hours, and the warm, soapy water was having a Pavlovian effect. Giles was in the habit of jerking off in the shower almost every morning. It was one of his strategies for keeping his monstrous organ under control. He tried to keep the wolf satisfied. It had never been in greater need of petting.

As he began to gently caress this creature, this thing that seemed to have an independent will and existence, he felt ashamed, knowing that, whatever he told himself, whatever other images he tried to force into his mind—the breasts of a fashion model, the ass of a martyrous Catholic virgin who had begged him to sodomize her the laundry room of St. Agatha’s School for Girls when Buffy’s parents were still children—he was stroking his cock specifically over his Slayer. Guiltily he imagined himself literally stroking it over her, standing above her, looking down, masturbating as she lay before him, her legs spread wide, fingering herself and longing, begging to feel his cock shoved deep into her pussy once more and once more and once more.

He was disgusted with himself, but no amount of guilt could make him masochistic enough to go back into that room both naked and painfully aroused, lie down on top of the covers she slept under and touch neither her body nor himself. He stroked and pawed and rubbed his genitals. He groped and kneaded and squeezed and fondled them, imagining Buffy’s hands on his body. He sheathed his cock in his hand, sliding it from head to hilt a dozen, two dozen, three dozen times. He grunted with the intensity of self-induced frustration ready to be satisfied.

“Oh!Oh!Oh!” He moaned. The rod of flesh in his hand tautened inexpressibly, unbearably, and then released in an agony of bliss and cessation of torment. “Oh Good God in Heaven!” he cried, as his cum spurted forth into the steaming water. Suddenly, as his testicles were emptied, his mind was filled. He watched his potent semen flow safely and ineffectually into the bowels of the Pacific Coast Motor Lodge and finally knew what he needed to do to save himself and Buffy from the disaster they had been hurtling towards for the past twenty-four hours.

As he stood naked, sated washing both his clothes and Buffy’s in the sink, Giles turned his epiphany over and over in his head, checking for flaws from every possible angle. He spotted more than a few, but he still judged it to be his best course of action. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he walked back into the bedroom. Buffy was moaning, sighing and moving in her sleep in horny restlessness. He tried not to imagine her dreams. He had just mastered his evil little twin. He didn’t want to wrestle with it all over again tonight. He had more important things to do than wanking himself off. He had to take material action.

Giles walked to the phone and dialed, reaching back into a life he hadn’t touched in more than fifteen years. He hoped the number was still good, yet he dreaded speaking to the man. With every ring of the phone, his dread deepened. “Hello,” said a belligerently groggy voice at last, obviously disturbed from a deep sleep. It was not yet ten p.m. He spoke with the unmistakable intermediate accent of an Englishman too long in the States.

“Hello,” Giles said stiffly, retreating into formal courtesy, “May I speak with Dr. David Pummil, please?”

“Who wants to know?” David demanded incongruously. His speech was slurred, Giles realized, more persistently and pronouncedly than could be explained by his aborted sleep. For a moment, he wondered disdainfully if the pharmacology professor wasn’t getting a little too into his work again. But then, he reminded himself, he was one to talk.

“This is Rupert Giles,” he said, holding his breath for the reaction he knew this was likely to illicit. It came swiftly and forcefully.

“Ah, Bloody fucking hell! What the fuck do you bastard want with me now!?!” he demanded.

“I need your help,” Giles said, his tone grim and businesslike, knowing better than to plead for Pummil’s sympathy, desperately willing him not to hung up. “I’d try to find someone else,” he explained, only the slightest hint of polite apology in his voice, “but there isn’t time.”

“Fuck time!” David declared. “Fuck you and your fucking Council too. Everything’s the end of the Goddamned world with you motherfuckers! But somehow the old bitch just keeps on spinnin’. Funny that.”

Clearly, David wasn’t coping any better with his losses to the cause. Or at least, he was having a bad night about it. “Look, David,” Giles found himself pleading after all, getting no use from his pose of professionalism, “If the Council knew what I’m calling you about, they’d geld me like a French philosopher. Please, if we were ever friends, I need one now.”

“Celeste was your friend,” said David bitterly. Giles felt the familiar kicked-in-the-stomach feeling of one who has lost that of which he is most in need entirely by his own fault and can do nothing to recover it. But a millisecond later David mercifully added, “Well, come on already, tell me what you want?”

“Erm... I believe they call it the... ‘morning after pill’,” Giles admitted, suddenly sheepish as well as grateful.

David laughed out loud. “Oh for fuck’s sake!” he said. “Tell the girl to go the Emergency Room.”

“I can’t,” Giles explained guiltily. “I can’t risk anyone finding out. She’s... a minor, and at least for the moment a fugitive. And she’s my Slayer.”

David snorted in shocked contempt. “Now _that_ I’d have never believed of you, Rupert, if I hadn’t had it from your own mouth. Just about anything else, but not that.”

“Yes,” said Giles testily, sarcastically, feeling impatient with his own shame. “It’s long been a well-established fact that I am a horrible human being. Now I confess from my own lips that all my detractors were right about me all along, for there is no fathoming the depths of my depravity. Now are you going to help me or not?”

“You’re still shit at asking for help,” David informed him fairly mildly. “You beg like you got leverage when you don’t. Entitled, when you’re not.”

“No,” Giles admitted, trying to sound more humble, “I am not entitled. To anything, really. And I am begging. Will you help me, please.”

“No,” David said, shocking the breath out of him. “But I will her,” he added, letting it back in again, tormenting him just a little, Giles supposed, for old time’s sake, and coming to his aid for the same reason. They completed their conversation, quickly and in a businesslike fashion. David would make a phone call to a pharmacist friend in Elmwood who owed him a whale of a favor. Giles was to call at the man’s shop in the morning.

Giles was on the verge of friendly parting words, when David stunned him once again. “There!” he declared with quiet, definite bitterness, “I’ve given you what you need to stop your little lamb from crawling off the altar. Now we are bloody well even if I ever owed you anything. Don’t you dare call me again. I know where the bodies are buried. My heart is buried with them!”For a moment, Giles was too shocked to speak. In that moment, David hung up.

Giles sat there, in the one small, cheap uncomfortable chair next to the slip of a table that held the phone, and buried his face in his hands. He was a pariah. A pariah who was exhausted and had nowhere to sleep. He didn’t dare lay down on the bed with Buffy, even on top of the covers. Even assuming he could trust himself, even in his sleep, she was trusting him not to trust her. He had administered her intoxicants with the understanding that he was doing so for medical purposes and that he would keep her safe while she was under their influence. And she was easily strong enough to overpower him physically or by force of direct sexual influence. If she wrapped her naked body around his, he could not resist her in any sense. To have put himself in a position to allow that to happen would have been a betrayal. It would have been rape even in a world without statutes.

 


	4. Star 69 Or What the Definition of Is Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Goodbye kiss is followed by a police interrogation in which Buffy gives some fairly oblique answers to some very awkward questions.

Giles was debating the relative merits of the chair and floor as places to doze fitfully through an agonizing night when the phone rang. “Hello,” he said, assuming it would be Xander. David Pummil certainly wasn’t about to call him back and no one else knew they were here. It was the front desk. “Mr. _Rayne_?” the clerk asked, uncertainly.

“Yes,” Giles answered without hesitation.

“There are some—There’s um... we’re holding a package, at the front desk for you.”

“Of course,” he answered smoothly, casually peeping through the curtains. The cruiser was parked in a slot around front. “I’ll get dressed and come right down.” He hung up the phone and rushed to arouse Buffy. “We’ve got to get out of here!” he said quietly, urgently.

“The factory’s on fire,” Buffy agreed, not yet fully aroused. Then sitting up, groggy but more or less lucid, she asked “Giles, what is it?”

“The police,” he informed her. “County Sheriffs, actually.”

“How did they find us?” Buffy asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted worriedly. “I did make a couple of phone calls, trying to... sort out our options...”

Buffy laughed sardonically, “That’s it then!” she said, “Star 69.”

“Start what?” Giles asked, confused and guiltily not quite appalled enough.

Buffy rolled her eyes. Drunk as she was, she was too annoyed to be amused or titillated by this misconstruction. Sometimes she could swear Giles actually cultivated his hopeless ignorance of technology. “ _Star_ 69,” she reiterated. “It’s a code you can push on a phone and ring back the last number that called it. Which, they would have gotten the front desk though.

“That’s who called me,” he confirmed. “They claim to be holding a package for me, well, Ethan’s package, actually. They’re expecting him to come at any moment.”

“Wait, what?” said Buffy.

Giles smiled, “I took the liberty of registering under the name Ethan Rayne.”

“Okay,” said Buffy, with the precise enunciation of one who is aware of the danger of slurring one’s speech. “I can work with that. So let’s think; what do we do? Gotta stay focused.” She started to get up, then added, “Where are my clothes?” Her brow knitted. “Where are _your_ clothes.”

“I just washed them,” Giles admitted apologetically. “They’re sopping wet.” He risked another peak through the curtains, “They’re probably watching the landing,” he surmised, “I’d suggest going out the bathroom window and over the roof, but...”

“My leg’s too fucked up,” Buffy finished for him. “And,” she added, blushing and grinning, “I am _not_ doing _that_ in a towel.”

“I’m not wild about the proposition myself,” Giles agreed.

“But you _can_ , do it?” she asked, “If you have to?”

Giles considered this for a beat. “Two to one I can.”

“Then you have to,” Buffy opined. “It’s a better shot than the front door.”

“But what about you?” Giles worried. “I can’t just leave you here.”

“Cause you being in jail too is gonna help me how?” Buffy argued.

“But I—” Giles started to protest again.

“Giles go!” Buffy insisted, “I need you out where you can do me some good! Just... get out of here the best you can.”

“Right,” he agreed. “I’m going to report the car stolen. Tell them you were... taken against your will.”

“By Ethan Rayne?” Buffy guessed, making an unpleasant face.

“No,” Giles corrected, “By Angel. He must have found Ethan’s credit card in the glove box. That way we don’t have to explain how Angel would have gotten hooked up with Ethan.”

“Got it,” Buffy agreed with excessive deliberateness. There was no time to worry about explaining what anything of Ethan’s was doing in Giles’ glove box. In minutes Giles would be out the window and gone. Buffy would be detained who knew where and for who knew how long.

Suddenly, impulsively, Buffy grabbed Giles by the shoulders, pulled him down to her and kissed him hard on the lips, not much longer than a peck, but fierce, passionate. He braced himself on the headboard with both hands to keep from grabbing her breasts and kissed her back. Her lips opened to him and they kissed more deeply for a moment, two, too long. Two amorous tongues, crossing and recrossing. His cock leapt for joy that some part of him was once again inside her. It sat up and begged to join in.

Finally, he forced himself to pull back. Buffy let him go. They stared at each other, hearts pounding, hardly knowing what aspect of their situation to be most frightened of. Then he hurriedly gathered his wallet and keys into his first aid kit, made himself an embarrassingly diaper-like garment from his towel and the bandaging tape, rolled his wet clothes into a ball and headed out the window.

At the shout of “Police!” Buffy had just enough time to lie back so that she could start up when the door was kicked in.“Buffy Summers?” The man asked matter-of-factly yet forcefully, authoritatively, toggling the light switch with one hand, holding his gun in the other.

“Who wants to know!” Buffy demanded then laughed because that was a silly thing for a person to say who was supposed to have been kidnapped.

“Deputy Paulson,” the officer stated coolly, “Del Bacco County Sheriff’s Department. Is there anyone else in here?”

Buffy swung from amused to panicky. Did she know Angel was gone or had she been asleep? “There... was... someone,” she managed haltingly. “Angel... my... my ex. He... was in the bathroom... I think he must have gone out the window. He kissed me!” she declared suddenly, sounding very shocked. She shook her head and laughed again. “I am _so_ drunk!” she said. “I’m just like, hey, look what I have under my towel, and he’s all—” Buffy looked down. “Oh,” she said, her affect going almost flat. Her towel and her covers had fallen down to her lap, completely exposing her breasts. It took her a moment to decide that the thing to do was to cover them. Somewhere outside an engine was being cranked.

“Stay where you are,” Paulson ordered, kicking open the bathroom door, and sweeping that tight space with the muzzle of his gun. A salt breeze wafted through the open window. After radioing in news of the suspect’s flight, Paulson turned his attention back to Buffy.

“You wanna tell me what happened,” he informed her.

“I do?” Buffy asked doubtfully. Then she remembered she did. “Angel took me,”she repeated, “by force.” Buffy laughed and corrected herself, “I mean against my will. He tailed us to the mall and grabbed Willow’s dad, but he was trying to get at me. I went down into the basement to try to get them to let Dr. Rosenberg go, but they dragged us both into the sewer—”

“Who’s they?” Paulson interrupted.

“Angel and Friends,” said Buffy.

“Those friends include Ethan Rayne?” the deputy asked.

“No,” Buffy laughed. “We just stole his credit card. I mean Angel did. Hey are you supposed to be asking me all these questions when I’m all drunk and naked like this? Isn’t there a rule about that or something? Like a Miranda something thing. Or there has to be another girl in the room or something?”

“I’m not arresting you,” Paulson reminded her. “And I’m damn sure not going to strip search you. If that’s even possible. I’m rescuing you from being kidnapped. You’re a ‘victim’ remember?”

“Oh, right,” Buffy laughed. “Sorry, I keep forgetting.”

“I’m returning you to the custody of your mother, who has agreed to meet us at the police department, where they’ve requested you come in for a little voluntary questioning,” Paulson, went on. Buffy was starting to get the feeling that he was really, really upset with her, though she wasn’t a hundred percent sure why. “Unless, of course, you’ve been sexually assaulted, in which case I have to take you to the hospital first.”

Buffy cocked her head, thinking about this possibility. “Would they have emergency contraceptives?” She asked.

“Yeah,” Paulson said, shaking his head in contempt. “They give them to you right after they swab your vagina for semen samples to convict your boyfriend of rape.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Buffy shouted, meaning Angel. This was followed by the nauseous realization that this statement applied (and failed to apply) equally to Giles. More importantly, he’d be the one to match any incriminating samples that still happened to be there.

Paulson seemed to be growing angrier by the second, “That why you came to this motel with him, cause he’s not your boyfriend?” he demanded.

“I didn’t come with him,” Buffy reminded him defiantly, genuinely affronted at his insinuations even though she was lying to him. “He kidnapped me!” But that was a dangerous answer. “I don’t want to go to the hospital, though,” she added hurriedly. “I hate hospitals! I mean, he didn’t rape me.”

Paulson snorted.“What did he want with you, then?”

Buffy shrugged, “Revenge? Control? Angel was obsessed with me from the minute we... broke up.”

“This Angel have a last name?” Paulson demanded.

“Not that anyone knows,” Buffy admitted.

“You’ve been screwing this guy for how long?” Paulson challenged, “and you’re telling me you don’t know his last name?”

“Are you allowed to talk to kids like that?” the girl asked, oddly conversationally. She was shitfaced.

“Sue me,” he said, in no mood to answer her drunken objections. “This is a murder investigation. What’s the son-of-a-bitch’s last name?”

“Well, I guess it just never came up,” Buffy mumbled sullenly, embarrassedly, looking down at her breasts and pulling the sheet up some more. The pregnant silence panted for her to bring forth a better explanation. “For all I know,” she rambled, “Ethan Rayne could be his real name. Nobody really knows Angel, not completely. Every time you get even a little bit close he withdraws. That’s part of the reason we broke up I guess, that and his temper. Well and the whole... murder thing... I guess.”

“How does the teacher fit in?” the Deputy asked, giving her a hard, searching look.

‘Surprisingly well, actually,’ Buffy thought, grinning helplessly. “What tea— ” she started to ask, still thinking he meant Giles. Then it hit her. “You mean Miss Calendar?”

“Yeah. Why?” the cop asked bitterly. “Your not-boyfriend kill a lot of teachers? And what the hell are you grinning about? You think this is funny? You’re screwing a psycho who killed a woman and raped her corpse! Yesterday! I don’t know where his nasty-ass dick was when he was twisting Rosenberg’s balls halfway off, but I hope you at least made him wash it!”

“I am not having sex with Angel!” Buffy protested hotly, definitely not smiling now.

“Are, was, were, whatever,” Paulson interrupted. “I don’t want to know what your definition of is is. Did you see him kill Dr. Rosenberg or not?”

“He was alive last I saw,” Buffy said honestly. “But if he’s dead now, Angel did it.”

Paulson laughed. “Except if he didn’t do it right in front of you he has an alibi. Two actually. He was with you and your mother at the same time! Forty miles apart! I mean, he just left here, right? You weren’t lying about that?”

“Ummmm...” Buffy didn’t know what to say. “Well, I was asleep for a while...” she fumbled. “But anyways. He wouldn’t have to be there to kill him. His min—I mean his friends would do it for him. He... bosses everybody.”

“His men!” Paulson repeated, as if he’d triumphed over her somehow. “This guy’s a drug dealer, isn’t he? Some wig in one of those Mexican meth gangs!? What are they branching out into prescriptions now? Maybe he asked you and your little friend to help him get his hands on a prescription pad, but things got out of hand, didn’t they?”

“I want to see my Mom!” Buffy wailed, suddenly near tears, reaching the last stage of drunkenness before starting to sober up.

“Fine,” Paulson said, “have it your way. Go in the bathroom and put your clothes on.

“But they're all wet,” Buffy objected. “He washed them.”

“Now that’s some full service kidnapping,” Paulson pointed out dryly. “I’d rather have a wet girl in my car than an naked one,” he added, then instructed, “Keep the door open.”

“While I’m getting dressed?” the girl whined.

Paulson laughed and shook his head. “Believe me, kid, you’re not my type,” he said. But when Buffy got out of the bed, holding her towel closed, his eyes made a couple of full sweeps of her body which just for a second made her think that maybe she was his type after all. Then he sighed heavily. “Shit!” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were injured. Now I definitely have to take you to the hospital.”

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In Firefly Order](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1706807) by [MyEvilTwin (ProtoNeoRomantic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/MyEvilTwin)




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